Irene and Selene had already found a place to live.
It was not a house they had bought.
Irene had simply used her Enchantment Magic. The surrounding trees collapsed with a thunderous crash, and a luxurious castle no smaller than her lord's manor, complete with walls and a courtyard, appeared out of thin air.
Of course, it was not actual creation from nothing.
To put it simply, it was a matter of grabbing, taking, and placing.
To put it less politely, she had directly snatched it from someone else!
Under Selene's suggestion, the castle even had a hot spring.
Raizel knew very well that there were no hot springs beneath the East Forest.
The reason was simple.
He had checked before.
Who knew where Irene had moved it from?
'It can't be Hosenka's hot spring, right?'
The closest one to here was Hosenka Town's hot spring.
Irene's Magic really was this unreasonable.
Without spending a single Jewel, she had obtained an entire castle out of nowhere!
Raizel guessed she had probably taken it from some earl or duke's unused castle.
He could already imagine the scene one day when that duke or earl suddenly decided to stay in the rarely visited castle for a night.
...
"Where's my castle?!!!"
The earl would be grabbing his hair with a terrified expression.
He would discover that his castle had vanished into thin air, leaving only a huge pit where it had once stood.
....
'Mm and just like that, the world would gain another unsolved mystery.'
Raizel could already picture it in his mind.
Irene had also adjusted the castle afterward, the kind of adjustment where even if that duke or earl found it, they would not dare claim it.
The most outrageous part was that Irene's castle was not far from Raizel's home.
Raizel looked at Irene's castle in the distance, then looked at his own house.
Instantly, his two-story villa with a courtyard felt like an old, broken-down little shack.
The reason Irene gave was that she liked the red maple trees in front of Raizel's house.
As for whether Raizel believed that or not, that had nothing to do with Irene.
Where Irene lived was not very important.
The main issue was how the house had arrived.
This was clearly something she had snatched from someone else.
After thinking about it, Raizel still said, "Actually... with your and Selene's assets, there's really no need to do things this way."
At least in Raizel's view, this kind of method was not worth encouraging.
It was not as if they could not afford it.
Even if they wanted to live in a castle, with Ishgar's construction standards, as long as enough money was paid, three shifts working around the clock could have one ready to move into within a week.
Irene answered without changing expression, "This was fastest. It's not from the Kingdom of Fiore. It belonged to an official, and that man seems to have been arrested for corruption."
Since things had already come to this, and the castle had already been moved, Raizel could not exactly make Irene move it back again.
Raizel did not think Irene would lie to him, so he raised one finger.
"Just this once. No next time alrgiht?"
Irene raised an eyebrow and neither confirmed nor denied it.
Raizel pointed at the steaming hot spring.
"No, wait. What about that hot spring? It isn't from Hosenka Town, is it?"
Selene placed one hand on her slender waist and proudly lifted her chest.
"The hot spring is mine."
"Then there's no problem."
Selene blocked her mouth with her folding fan, thinking she was speaking very quietly as she whispered into Raizel's ear,
"I'll tell you a secret. If Erza and Irene bathe in the hot spring together, they will make up very quickly."
"We can do this... and that..."
"???"
Raizel really wanted to say that she was speaking so loudly Irene could hear her.
Just look at Irene's expression across from them!
Irene's hand was gripping her antler staff so hard it was trembling nonstop. Her face looked like she was about to fire a Deus Sema straight at Selene!
Raizel decided to change the topic.
Besides, he had indeed forgotten about this issue.
"Oh, right. There's something very important I forgot. Actually, I should have asked back in the Alvarez Empire."
Irene gave a cold laugh and looked at Raizel.
"I thought you did not care about that matter at all."
"Who made the decision regarding the Alvarez Empire's military operation?"
"Since His Majesty is in the empire, who else do you think would dare overstep him and make that decision?"
"..."
Raizel helplessly rubbed his brow.
"The target really is Fairy Heart, then?"
Irene admitted it very calmly.
"Of course."
Then Irene threw out another heavy piece of information.
"When Fairy Tail fought Tartaros, he left briefly. After returning, he came to me and spoke about Fairy Heart."
Selene asked curiously, "Fairy Heart? What is that?"
After thinking for a moment, Raizel still answered Selene.
"The guild's secret weapon. Only the guild master is supposed to know about it."
"Its function is Magic Power, but in reality, it is an unusable weapon. At least, for guild members, it is unusable."
No matter what, Raizel would never use it.
"Oh."
Hearing that it was Magic Power, Selene immediately lost interest.
There was far too much Magic Power in Elentear.
Her interest in weapons existed only because she wanted to eliminate the Five Dragon Gods.
Now that she had Raizel and Irene, even her search for Athena, the strongest human weapon created by Elefseria's disciple and said to be capable of killing the Five Dragon Gods, was no longer particularly urgent.
There was no way she would care about something like Fairy Heart.
The only reason she had shown sudden interest in Fairy Heart was because the term had come from Raizel, Irene, and Zeref.
Any word that appeared from the mouths of those three was surely not ordinary.
But if Raizel dared to say it, Selene dared to believe it.
Irene neither confirmed nor denied Raizel's claim that Fairy Heart was unusable.
Of course, she did not expose him either.
Raizel turned to Irene and asked, "Do you know why he changed like this?"
"I don't. I imagine no one besides August and Invel knows the answer to that question."
The "Winter General," Invel Yura, one of the Spriggan 12, served as Emperor Zeref's chief of staff and the military governor of the Alvarez Empire.
He could be considered one of the people Zeref trusted most.
Although Irene was one of the two pillars, her position relied entirely on her strength. In terms of actual authority, she did not possess much.
Of course, the main reason was that she did not want it.
She had not even solved her own problems yet, so why would she bother managing an empire?
Raizel did not obtain any other information from Irene.
If there was no other reason, then it was probably because Zeref did not want to be trampled on and toyed with by the Black Dragon, causing him to become obsessed.
Seeing Raizel rubbing his chin with a thoughtful expression, Irene asked,
"Are you finished asking?"
Raizel froze for a moment, then quickly reacted.
"For now, yes."
"Then we are going shopping. Those furnishings, especially the bed, I do not want them."
A slight obsession with cleanliness.
Many people had that and it was very normal.
Selene and Irene, who both loved beauty, naturally had it as well.
Although Irene still could not sleep right now, it probably would not take much longer. Her sense of taste was gradually recovering by the day.
Raizel understood.
He very consciously stepped aside.
Irene brought the excited Selene, along with Heine and Juliet, and left directly.
Raizel did not follow them.
There was no need to manage them.
Once people saw Selene's guild mark, no one in Magnolia would dare cheat them.